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OUR STORY

Tools For Nomads®

BORN IN JAPAN AND A FRIEND TO OUR ENVIRONMENT

We are a Japanese maker of premium bags, pens, house shoes, eyewear, notebooks, bento boxes, rain gear, and other useful tools for life on-the-go. As our name Topdrawer implies, we offer the tools you use most… the tools you keep handy in your top drawer or bag.

Times have changed. For many of us, working in the same office or studio every day is a thing of the past. Instead, we need our "office" to follow us around, whether we work on a plane, a train, in a coffee shop, or at a client’s office.

If your office has to fit in your bag, we have products designed to help you do your best work, anywhere. Our gear is beautifully designed to be lightweight, minimal, portable, rugged, and friendly to the environment.

We believe the best way to avoid adding landfill to our planet is to avoid creating it to begin with. Good design is like good cooking; it all starts with using the best ingredients. And in our case, that means sourcing the finest, sustainable raw materials and using ethical factories throughout the world to fabricate our products. In addition to our own products, we partner with like-minded brands that share our values.

BUILT TO LAST AND TO BE HANDED DOWN

Our standards on quality are simple: we build things to last. In a disposable culture where it seems that most companies have a strategy of "planned obsolescence," we've had enough! We’ve had enough, because we believe our land and our oceans have had enough. There is no long-term value in creating junk, so we create products in the same spirit of the tools our grandfathers once purchased. These are tools that, in many cases, can be used an entire lifetime and even handed down to kids and grandkids. These are tools that often look better with age as they patina after the owner’s travels and passionate use.

HELPFUL SHOPS IN CREATIVE NEIGHBORHOODS

We have small Topdrawer shops in Tokyo, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Kyoto, and we’re regularly opening new shops in new cities. Our shops are designed with the same sensitivity as our products. Located in creative urban neighborhoods, we avoid traditional malls. We look for unique locations where architects, designers, musicians, artists, entrepreneurs, writers, and other creatives tend to spend time. We work hard to fit into the fabric of our communities and within the existing architecture.

Since our clients need their gear to fit in their bag, our shops are small. (After all, how how much can a person carry with them if their work and life routinely brings them to new places?) For our fixtures, we use reclaimed wood from old American railcars, and we rescue other raw materials otherwise destined for the landfill. We love the scars in the wood that reveal decades of use, and the opportunity to pay homage to vagabonds who rode the rails in centuries past.

PASSIONATE PEOPLE HERE TO HELP

But the thing we're most proud of is our people. Our shops and web site are staffed by passionate, friendly people (illustrators, designers, writers, artists) who are here because we believe in our mission. We are here to help you choose the right tool for your next project or journey. We know how important your work is to you, and share a similar passion: to create a better world through the work we do.